Mugabe warns against Western calls for regime change in Zimbabwe

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Longtime ruler President Robert Mugabe scoffed at Western calls for "regime change" in Zimbabwe and warned his countrymen yesterday of foreign and local subversives in their midst.

Mugabe said former colonial power Britain was embittered by his 2000 program to seize thousands of farms owned mostly by the descendants of white British settlers.

"The British have resorted to shameless lies that there is no democracy or observance of human rights in Zimbabwe," Mugabe told mourners at the state funeral of Eddison Zvobgo, a ruling party founder.

Zvobgo, a US-trained lawyer, died after a long illness on August 22. He was 69.

Mugabe said Britain and its Western allies sent their nationals to Zimbabwe to work for charities, and rights and advocacy groups to destabilise his nation.

"They talk of regime change unashamedly. What right have they to affect that change, or even talk about it?" Mugabe said.

The government has proposed new laws for approval by the ruling-party-dominated Harare parliament in October to ban foreign human rights groups and prohibit local advocacy groups receiving foreign funding.

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Mugabe said British Prime Minister Tony Blair and US President George W Bush both called for regime change in Zimbabwe and were backing the opposition Movement for Democratic Change.

"We know their tactics ... they will find people in our midst, those who can be easily bought, those who offer themselves for sale. Blair has told the whole world he is working with the MDC to bring about regime change," Mugabe said.

He warned Zimbabweans to be aware of "wolves in sheep's clothing speaking the sweet language of deceit" to restore British influence in the nation.

Mugabe said Zvobgo, as a founder of the ruling ZANU PF party, symbolised the long struggle against British colonialism. An intellectual and lawyer, he suffered abuse and imprisonment under white rule in the colonial era.

"The popular imagery of scorn was that our people had recently descended from animals, had come down from the trees like monkeys. They called us monkeys, didn't they?" Mugabe said.

Zvobgo was a key negotiator in talks in Britain in 1979 that led to independence the following year, ending a bitter, seven-year bush war that left at least 40,000 fighters dead.

Mugabe has ruled since independence in 1980.

Zvobgo was buried today at Heroes' Acre, a memorial shrine outside Harare to ruling party politicians and guerrillas who died in the independence war.